Nice coverage of this weekend's San Francisco Leonard Cohen Festival from 48 Hills!

Read the whole article here. From the article…

The final event of the festival was a reflective evening with Grammy-winning singer, songwriter, and producer Sharon Robinson. Robinson’s silky voice regaled the audience with songs and stories of her almost 40 years as a collaborator and friend of Cohen. Offering insight into their collaboration process, Robinson noted that most songs started with poems that took Cohen years to write as she wrote music to support Cohen’s vision of the song.

Seeing the emails, which today almost seem quaint, between Robinson and Cohen felt intimate as did her descriptions of Cohen’s Los Angeles home: ethereal, minimalist, modest, quiet, old pine table by the window, religious texts, books. Her stories about Cohen–the man who made a great tuna sandwich and loved Bob’s Big Boy restaurant, the godfather to her son who bought him a cocktail book for his 16th birthday–gave glimpses into the life of the person behind the mystical songs…

Among so many delightful stories, I was struck by those about Cohen in the later parts of his life: The “grand tour” of 400 shows which started because Cohen needed money after being defrauded, according to Robinson, led to a sense of fulfillment that had previously eluded him. His ability to embrace his  inevitable death—still with a sense of humor. Before going on a tour of her own, Robinson visited Cohen who wished her well and told her if he wasn’t there when she returned, she should “try an ouija board.” Robinson shared a portrait of Cohen whose sharp wit appreciated both the mundane and sublime in daily life.